The Best Advice We’ve Got on Loneliness & Jealousy
October 12, 2023
Glennon Doyle:
Hello, love bugs. Welcome back to, We Can Do Hard Things. The three of us, Abby, Amanda, and I, are all together again in my and Abby’s office/Chase’s room surrounded by books, and dogs, and Dynna, and wires.
Amanda Doyle:
Wires. Mostly wires, actually,
Abby Wambach:
We should take a picture of what it looks like that way.
Amanda Doyle:
Yes.
Abby Wambach:
I think people would want to know.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, and we are really excited to welcome you into the office. Thanks for coming. Always. Thanks for coming. We love doing this with you. Today, this is the plan. We’re going to give you our best advice, okay? Not like advice that we’ve gathered from other people. We’re going to listen to some challenges that you all have sent to us via email or voicemail, and we are going to give you our best advice, okay? We’re not saying it’s going to be good advice.
Amanda Doyle:
Yeah. Just our best.
Glennon Doyle:
What we’re saying is we’re going to give you our best ideas and advice, so before we start, let’s take a minute and talk about advice. Who do you two trust to give you good advice? Can you think of people that, when you have a problem, you know, “That person will give me good advice”?
Abby Wambach:
I mean, I obviously will say you two, for sure. You both are brilliant advice givers, but outside of you two, I would say Liz and Alex.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes, same.
Abby Wambach:
Those are my two.
Glennon Doyle:
Liz Gilbert, Alex Hedison. Why? Let’s first take Liz. What is it about her that makes you trust her advice?
Abby Wambach:
I think because she’s gone through a lot of stuff in her life, and has proactively went in search of figuring some of that stuff out. Both Alex and Liz aren’t, “Well, that just happened. I’m not going to go in any kind of search and analyze.” They are the most proactive about understanding themselves and the world, and how those two can compete against each other and with each other.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. It’s like, if you were going to trust somebody to tell you about the world, you would trust an adventurer, like someone who had gone out and seen a lot of different places.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
And Alex and Liz are both people who are adventurers of the human experience.
Abby Wambach:
Condition.
Glennon Doyle:
They dig in.
Abby Wambach:
Yes.
Glennon Doyle:
They do recovery. They do therapy. They do talking to people. They’re adventurers of the soul.
Abby Wambach:
Yes.
Glennon Doyle:
And so when you bring them a problem, it’s almost like they’re like, “Please.”
Abby Wambach:
I know I’ve done it a few times where-
Glennon Doyle:
They know everything.
Abby Wambach:
… I brought this one thing to Alex that I was devastated, I was devastated about. And she reframed that in two seconds. The way that she heard my story, she was unaffected, and I was like, “How is this person not floored, surprised, and shocked by this?” It was like she had heard a million worse stories.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, like you think you’re special?
Abby Wambach:
Yes.
Glennon Doyle:
This shit is just life. So what was interesting about that story is you brought to her a problem you were having, that somebody did something that upset you very much.
Abby Wambach:
Yes.
Glennon Doyle:
And the way that Alex reframed it, which I thought was so interesting, is that she didn’t focus on the thing that happened. She didn’t focus on the person that did it. She said, “Isn’t it interesting that this thing is causing this much turmoil in you?”
Abby Wambach:
Yes.
Glennon Doyle:
“What has happened is that something has come up in you that is unhealed, so thank God this happened.”
Abby Wambach:
I know she got it.
Glennon Doyle:
“This has given you an opportunity to heal.”
Abby Wambach:
Literally, four minutes later, she was just like, “Eventually you’re going to say ‘Thank God for this person.'”
Amanda Doyle:
It’s like the Maya Angelou thing like, “Say thank you right now.”
Abby Wambach:
Yes.
Amanda Doyle:
Say thank you right now.
Abby Wambach:
And at the beginning of that conversation I was like, “Fuck this person,” and at the end I was like, “Thank God for this.” I hadn’t done any of the work yet, of course, but I was like, “Oh. I’m going to have to say thank God for so-and-so for showing me what I need to work on,” and that is why Liz and Alex are the best.
Glennon Doyle:
What about you, sissy? Who do you go to?
Amanda Doyle:
I mean, I think it’s an interesting question too about advice. I think, at least for me, probably 90% of the time that I am sharing a problem purportedly for advice, I actually am not seeking advice, because I think there’s so many things that we go to people like, “I need to share this with you,” ostensibly for the idea that people are going to advise us, but really we just want to either share and commiserate over the betrayal or the bullshit that someone did, or just be outraged together, or just share this monumental thing that happened to us.
Amanda Doyle:
But I feel like I rarely seek actual advice, as in counsel, as in “I’m stuck between these two or three roads. Which one do you advise me to go down based on what you know about me?” But obviously you two. Also, my friend, Bonzo, I only go to her when I’m ready, ready, because she isn’t going to bullshit. She is going to actually tell me what she thinks I should do, and she knows me really well, and so often if I’m not actually ready to change the thing, I’m not going down that road.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes. She’s not the one you call just to confirm your story or to gather witnesses for your own case.
Amanda Doyle:
Yes, exactly. It’s like, “Well, do I actually want to solve this? No. Well, then I’m not going to go over there,” and so that’s good to have someone like that. It’s also interesting to pay attention to whether you’re actually, like do you actually want advice? Advice suggests action and change and movement, and if you’re not going to do that, you’re just sharing a story. You’re not asking for advice.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. It’s such a good point. Most of us don’t want. That’s why it’s so important to know that about human beings, because I feel like we always jump into advice giving, when really the only time that you should really offer advice is when someone calls your voicemail podcast line and says, “Do you have advice for me?”
Amanda Doyle:
Well, it’s like the lying episode. It’s like when someone says, “I want to hear the truth.” I mean, think of how many relationship stories that people have come to you to share a story, and you’re like, “He’s never going to leave her. Everyone knows he’s never going to leave her.” You’re not actually asking me what I think, because everyone knows the correct answer to your conundrum, which is you leave his or you stop doing whatever you’re doing, but you’re not actually asking me that. What you’re asking me for is to lend you a listening ear and to actually not say what I think.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah.
Amanda Doyle:
Which is what we do most of the time, so I think it’s like that lying episode, where you kind of create a social contract. I think my social contract with Bonzo is, “You’re going to tell me where my dysfunction is in this, and you’re going to give it back to me, and then you’re going to tell me the changes that are going to help to not make that happen again,” and then John is just the most, for better or for worse, most level, emotional reactor to things ever, so it’s a very helpful one when I’m like, “This person just said this to me,” and sometimes I don’t know because I’m a very emotional reactor to things, and I’ll be like, “Is that weird?” And he will tell me honestly. When he says something’s weird or strange-
Glennon Doyle:
You’re like, “Oh.”
Amanda Doyle:
I’m like, “Well, wow. Then, it’s really weird.” Then, I am confirmed in my reaction to that being weird.
Glennon Doyle:
I think that’s really helpful. It’s helpful when you’re a very sensitive person. You have to have that. I mean, Abby and I, once a day, once a week, we have a thing, where we have figured out that just because I am triggered by something, it doesn’t mean anything happened, and I’m not being hard on myself.
Amanda Doyle:
No.
Glennon Doyle:
I’m saying like, so I’ll ask her, “Did that feel weird to you?”
Amanda Doyle:
Yes. Objectively speaking, was that odd?
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, or even with you, I’ll be like, “Did sister seem stressed?” And Abby will be like, “Yeah.” And I’m like, “Ah.” She’s like, “I don’t think it’s a problem.” So here’s the deal. We’re both with you. “Is sister stressed?”
Glennon Doyle:
“Yes.” For me, that’s a very upsetting thing.
Amanda Doyle:
With Abby, it’s a fact.
Glennon Doyle:
It is new information to me, and something that is so important in my recovery, and also unbelievable to me, that it is true, that in a space a person can be sad, upset, or angry, and I do not have to immediately become sad, upset, or angry, and I’m not there, but I can see…
Amanda Doyle:
Yeah. You can entertain that intellectually and conceptually.
Glennon Doyle:
Right, right. So I don’t know what that has to do with advice, other than there’s some advice for you. You can be in a room with someone who’s upset, and you can stay how you are. So do you have anything else to say about advice?
Abby Wambach:
I just want to make sure that you feel like you said who, your advice.
Glennon Doyle:
Oh. I agree with Liz and Alex. Yeah, I was thinking about how funny it is, like people think their parents, and I was thinking about my mom and advice. My mom is the worst advice giver ever, because she hates everyone I hate, she loves everyone I love. She thinks everything that I’ve done is perfect, so there’s no otherness to offer.
Amanda Doyle:
That’s the commiseration and the validation.
Glennon Doyle:
She commiserates.
Amanda Doyle:
Yes.
Glennon Doyle:
And you read that too. Oh my God. Totally. Totally.
Amanda Doyle:
Right.
Glennon Doyle:
And I did think about we have one kid who constantly wants to report trauma and drama, but never wants to fix it.
Amanda Doyle:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
Wants no ideas. That is not her purpose.
Amanda Doyle:
That is not what we’re doing here.
Glennon Doyle:
No, and so it is a different way of being, to listen to someone’s pain or problems and say, “That sounds so hard.”
Abby Wambach:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
And then nothing else, but I bet more people are like that than we know, because actually, usually when someone offers me advice, it makes me feel stupid most of the time, because I’m like, “I know that. I know what to do.”
Amanda Doyle:
Yeah. Does it make you feel stupid, or does it make you feel like you dislike them?”
Glennon Doyle:
It makes me feel like they think I’m stupid.
Amanda Doyle:
Oh.
Glennon Doyle:
Do you know what I mean? Obviously, I know how to solve the problem. We’re doing something else here.
Amanda Doyle:
Right.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, yeah. But these are people, these are Pod Squaders who don’t know how to solve their problems-
Amanda Doyle:
Maybe, or maybe they-
Glennon Doyle:
… And so they have come to us-
Amanda Doyle:
… Just want to come to us, and we can be like mom. We can be like they’re assholes, I can’t believe it.
Glennon Doyle:
And also, don’t you have those friends, like when I think about Alex and Liz and telling them stuff, usually when I’m telling them a problem, I’m thinking right now about a problem that I reported to Alex a couple of weeks ago. We were on FaceTime, and by the end of me talking, I was already embarrassed, because I was already looking at her face, listening to me report.
Amanda Doyle:
She’s like, “I’m waiting for the problem.”
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, I know, but I know exactly what my problem is. I know exactly what to do. I know exactly what she’s going to say before she opens her mouth, because I have heard myself through Alex’s ears, and now I know that this is all horse shit. She doesn’t have to say anything.
Amanda Doyle:
What is that? Verbal processing?
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah.
Amanda Doyle:
That’s a big thing. That’s why writing down in journals is so important. That’s why having people to share our issues with is important, because when we are all in our heads, our problems, our frustrations are so inchoate, you can’t touch them. They just feel overwhelming, so if you’re able to verbally process, you are walking through yourself in that, and if you’re able to write, you are making them more manageable by putting something so amorphous and un-dealable. You are making it dealable.
Glennon Doyle:
I think you should have a list of people, when you want to just get all riled up, you have that friend. You know you have that friend who’s just going to hate everyone you hate, be with you.
Amanda Doyle:
A very valuable friend.
Glennon Doyle:
Confirm your case.
Amanda Doyle:
Yes.
Glennon Doyle:
Like yes, you’re the winner. That other person is all the things, and then you should have an empathetic person who’s just going to be sad and soft for you, and then you should have the Bonzo, who’s like, “I assume you’re not going to waste my time if we’re not going to get to a solution here.”
Amanda Doyle:
Right, and we’re going to sit here and pretend like you haven’t done that same horse shit pattern for 30 years? Oh, I’m so surprised.
Abby Wambach:
That’s the trouble of having friends for a long time. You keep bringing back that same shit over and over and over.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. It’s better to get new ones so you can pretend like you’re just discovering this issue. All right. Let’s hear from our first Pod Squader.
River:
My name is River. My pronouns are they/them. I am someone who can feel alone in a crowd of my family and friends, and I need to feel really seen and known to feel safe, and also to feel present. I’m very sensitive to not having those things, especially right now. I recognize that we are all communal and social beings. That’s human nature, really, but we also live in a very individualistic world. I’m currently building a community in my life with people capable of giving me these things, but that’s not the only people I have in my life. So my question is how badly do I need to learn to be alone? What is the value of aloneness? Is there value to loneliness? How can I let my community in more when they are present, when they’re there for me? Thank you so, so much. You’re all like my mothers, my sisters, my guardian angels, my teachers. Thank you for everything. I listen to you, basically, every day for your guidance.
Glennon Doyle:
River.
Amanda Doyle:
River.
Abby Wambach:
I love that name too.
Glennon Doyle:
Damn, River. Well, you know I love this question. We have a kid who was talking to us recently about how they had been surrounded by people so much, and they have a group that is the most beautiful, little community of people that I’ve know at their age. They love each other, they take care of each other. They pull each other intellectually and emotionally. It’s a really gorgeous community, and our kid was starting to feel a little bit lost, so they carved out more alone time, just to go for walks, do all the things. They were reporting back to me about the results of that, and they said, “When I am alone is the time that I feel like I exist the most.”
Abby Wambach:
Whoa.
Glennon Doyle:
They can feel themselves existing the most, and I feel the same way. So it’s like I am blue, okay? It’s like I’m blue, and I can feel my blueness, and then when I’m with other people, it’s like I suddenly turn green. I’m mixed with their colors, and I just start to feel disintegrated a little bit, and I love that feeling. When you think about being at a concert, is the ultimate experience of that to me.
Amanda Doyle:
It’s communal.
Glennon Doyle:
You’re disappearing, and that is so beautiful. I love to disappear with a group, whether it’s us on the couch with our team last night, which the five of us, and it’s like we’re a mushy stew, or at a concert, where it’s like you really feel like, molecularly, you have disappeared. You are in the collective, you’re gone. I must have those experiences, and I must return to blue. If I don’t disappear and exist completely, then I feel like I’m not whole. So river, I think, is there value to aloneness? Oh my God.
Glennon Doyle:
To some of us, it’s when we exist fully. In our culture, we define loneliness as being alone, and I am the most lonely when I’m with a group of people and I can’t connect with any of them, and everything’s just talk, talk, talk, and I can’t see anybody’s blueness or greenness or redness, and I can’t feel my own blueness because there’s so much noise. That’s when I feel the most lonely. When I’m in a space that’s not supposed to be disappearing, it’s not supposed to be a concert, but I still feel like we’re all disappearing, which is why I don’t like a party.
Glennon Doyle:
I mean, I have friends who are married and are the most lonely when they’re with their partner on a couch, and they’re together, because they feel so unknown by that person, and they feel like they’re supposed to be known by that person. When you feel like it’s supposed to be connection, and it’s not there, that’s really lonely. I know people who hate to be alone, and that’s loneliness for them. So I think loneliness can be so many different things and it’s not just aloneness. If you’re asking, River, is it important to be alone and to have community, or if that’s an either/or, I think it’s an and/both.
Amanda Doyle:
I think it is so interesting what you just brought up about the concert, because that togetherness is not lonely, precisely because you are having what feels like dissolving into the same experience together. What River is talking about is that they have the experience of friends and family, who they feel they are lonely around because they don’t share the same, I forget how they put it, but experience of life, same values, or whatever. I think this is significant because there was a study out of USC last month, and it’s very different research than has ever been done, that is showing the brain processing of people who are lonely and people who are not lonely.
Amanda Doyle:
This, to me, blows my mind and makes sense of this kind of self-fulfilling prophecy of loneliness. So people who are not experiencing loneliness have very similar patterns in brain information processing as other people who do not experience loneliness. You’re not lonely, your brain works a certain way. You work very similarly to other people who are not lonely. If you are lonely, your brain processing is very individualized, distinct, idiosyncratic. So the brains of lonely people do not look like the brains of not lonely people, and also do not look like the brains of other lonely people. Your brain just looks very individual, which means that when you feel like you are not experiencing the world in the same way, with a shared experience and understanding, you are correct.
Abby Wambach:
Wow.
Amanda Doyle:
And the research is completely unaffected by how many friends you have, how much socialization you do, how many people are around you, does not affect your experience of your loneliness being the result of a feeling like you do not experience the world in the same way.
Glennon Doyle:
So does that mean that, if you’re a lonely person, you can’t just change your circumstances? It means that you are born a lonely person? Are people who have this lonely brain, is that why artists are always like, “Please let me show you, paint you, sing to you, or write to you what it’s like for me, because no one else is sharing this experience,” so we’re constantly like, “Look,” because it is an unusual experience that nobody else is having.
Amanda Doyle:
Right.
Glennon Doyle:
Lonely people are lonely people, are lonely people, are lonely people. They’re not just going to get a dog or get another friend?
Amanda Doyle:
Well, this is what’s mind-blowing. They haven’t done the research yet to show whether it’s a cart or a horse thing.
Glennon Doyle:
I see.
Amanda Doyle:
So the question is, right? If your brain is that idiosyncratic, do you become lonely because you realize, by watching the world and being around people, that your brain isn’t working like all these other people’s brains, and that makes you feel more lonely, or are you just born with lonely brain? But what is true is that it doesn’t matter how many people you surround yourself with. You are still going to be having a very distinct experience that is not the same as them.
Glennon Doyle:
Right. Holy shit.
Amanda Doyle:
And so, in fact, they have found that that actually might be, the research is still out, but it actually might be a risk factor. They say the possibility that being surrounded by people who see the world differently from oneself may be a risk factor for loneliness, so not only that, just adding those people to your mix doesn’t make it better. It might make it worse, so if you are blue and blue and blue, and you’re surrounding, you’re saying, “I’m so blue. I need to surround myself with more other colors,” if half of those people who are not lonely are all red, and the other half are lonely, but they’re not blue, they’re teal and yellow and purple and orange.
Glennon Doyle:
So let me just put this into a visual so that the Pod Squaders can visualize with me. What sister is saying is the people studied loneliness, and they’re like, “All right. We’ve got these 100 people who are saying they’re lonely, so we’re going to put them in a room, study them, and figure out, do they have a dog? Do they have enough friends? Do they have enough family?” And then what they found out was, “Oh. They all have different amounts of those. The thing they have in common is they all have an idiosyncratic brain,” so their brain is what they have in common. Not any circumstances that we define as loneliness.
Amanda Doyle:
Well, for the record, I don’t know that they looked at dogs and families and whatever. All they looked at is brain.
Glennon Doyle:
Well, you assume. You assume that they would look at circumstances also.
Amanda Doyle:
Well, it was just MRI imaging.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay.
Amanda Doyle:
So basically, let’s say they looked at 100 brains on MRIs, they said, “Okay. 50% of these people are lonely. 50% are not. What’s wild to us is that the 50% that are not lonely, their brains look very similar to one another.” Then, they looked at the other 50% who are lonely, and they’re like, “Lord have mercy. These people are all over the map. Their brains don’t look like each other, and they also don’t look like the people who are not lonely.”
Abby Wambach:
I mean, talk about a perpetuating loneliness.
Amanda Doyle:
Exactly.
Glennon Doyle:
Exactly. So then what we need is a different word. Then, the word lonely, it just has such a negative connotation, and it makes us feel like the thing we’re experiencing is that we need more people around us, so what we need is a different word. If what we’re saying is, “Lonely means your brain works differently than everybody else,” and that makes you feel isolated, then we just need a different word from that. How do you feel? Idiosyncratic again.
Amanda Doyle:
Yeah, exactly. How do I feel? Like I am not neither seen nor understood, nor experienced the world the same way as others.
Glennon Doyle:
Exactly.
Amanda Doyle:
How do you feel?
Glennon Doyle:
But not lonely?
Amanda Doyle:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
Like, I feel like nobody fucking gets me still, or I’m having a different experience than everyone is. What’s the word for that?
Amanda Doyle:
Yes. And I think that that is super helpful, because then even people who are not lonely people, maybe their brains work like all these other 50%. Congratulations. You’re lucky. They still could have periods of that. What is this icky feeling when I’m with these three people, and this thing happens, and I appear to be the only one that experiences it in this weird way? And so that is loneliness, right? It’s like I am alone in this feeling, in this experience, in this understanding of what’s happening, and so River already nailed it, because they have identified for themself what’s already the issue. It’s not the lack of people around them. It’s the having a connection with those who experience the world in the same way, and to have similar reactions. I think that’s why that is so coveted. That’s why when we find those people, we rarely let them go, because they are fucking rare.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah.
Amanda Doyle:
Rare.
Glennon Doyle:
And that’s why maybe we don’t need a lot of them. Maybe we just keep it tight.
Amanda Doyle:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. Wow, that’s so interesting. Just reframing what loneliness is, that’s the biggest difference between my first marriage and my second marriage. I was so freaking lonely in my first marriage, because I constantly felt like we were having different experiences. We would be in the same room. Something would happen with a kid, with a life, whatever, something would happen in the world, and I understood that we were having completely different experiences. I felt so lonely.
Amanda Doyle:
Yeah. It’s scary.
Glennon Doyle:
And that’s the biggest difference now in my marriage, is there’s lots of things, but that’s very rarely happening. We’re having similar experiences. I can trust. I can look at Abby, and be like, “Yeah. She knows exactly what’s happening with me, what just happened with the kid.” That’s the opposite of loneliness to me.
Amanda Doyle:
And many people don’t have that with their partners, but if you have that with someone-
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, and at a concert, that’s what you’re saying. It’s the same experience. If I’m at a concert, I’m watching Brandi Carlile and Catherine singing, and my heart is busting open with joy at their love, their community, and their lives, that is what everyone around me is thinking.
Amanda Doyle:
Yes. That is why you dissolve into them, because it is an in-distinction. It is not the distinction of having a different experience. So if you’re at a-
Glennon Doyle:
Party.
Amanda Doyle:
… Party, you know you’re not having the same experience with that person over there-
Glennon Doyle:
Nobody.
Amanda Doyle:
… And so that is why you’re lonely at a party. That isn’t why you’re not lonely at a concert.
Glennon Doyle:
And that’s why what I really want at a party is for everyone to ask one person a question. I love, at a dinner, when you do one question. Let’s have one question that everybody answers. That’s because everybody then is having the same experience. We’re looking at the person altogether, collectively. We’re all focused on one thing. We’re all having the same experience.
Abby Wambach:
And that’s really interesting, because I wouldn’t consider myself an overly lonely person, and so I’m not as concerned with needing to have the same experience, because it’s not as important to me, because I don’t think of myself or I wouldn’t consider myself a lonely person. So going to small talk cocktail hour, though I’m not having any cocktails, it doesn’t bother me, because I don’t care if I’m having a different experience than other people.
Amanda Doyle:
Or you’re on the 50%, where your brain works similarly to others.
Abby Wambach:
Right.
Amanda Doyle:
And so you have never picked up on the clues throughout your life that you are experiencing the world vastly differently than everyone else.
Abby Wambach:
Right, and so that’s less lonely.
Amanda Doyle:
And so you don’t have-
Abby Wambach:
There’s no yearning.
Amanda Doyle:
Yes. You don’t have the automatic presumption that you understand the world differently.
Abby Wambach:
Right.
Amanda Doyle:
So you don’t have that craving that needs to be met, because-
Abby Wambach:
That’s interesting.
Amanda Doyle:
… It is possible. And so you look around. You’re like, “50% of this party is experiencing the same way as I do,” and maybe you have that kind of understanding of the universe.
Abby Wambach:
Cool.
Glennon Doyle:
So River, in short…
Amanda Doyle:
In short, you are blue.
Abby Wambach:
We try to do this every time, like voicemails, and we get through one.
Glennon Doyle:
I know, and I feel like people, they leave us messages hoping for an answer, and we return to them 50,000 more questions and much more confusion.
Abby Wambach:
We’re very sorry. It’s who we are.
Glennon Doyle:
Let’s try to give River an in-short.
Amanda Doyle:
Okay.
Glennon Doyle:
In sum, River, it is possible that it’s not that you just haven’t found the right conglomeration of circumstances or people. It is possible that you just have an idiosyncratic brain, a different sort of brain. And so what we could do is not label that as a yearning, but just a difference, and that it is possible that you will feel best in experiences where there is a decided shared experience, like a concert, and with the very few people you will find throughout your life who you feel like see you, know you, and you share a common understanding with.
Amanda Doyle:
And that there’s not anything wrong with you, that you feel lonely in groups of people where you get the feeling that you experience things differently than them. That is actually correct.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah.
Amanda Doyle:
It is not your moral failing or emotional failing.
Glennon Doyle:
Or theirs.
Amanda Doyle:
Or theirs, that you are in this group and feel lonely.
Glennon Doyle:
And maybe go for art. Art is where we express our little idiosyncratic worlds, and say, “Someone, please look, and tell me if you relate.”
Abby Wambach:
That’s cute.
Amanda Doyle:
I’m blue.
Glennon Doyle:
I am blue.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay. God help the next one. Let’s hear from Emily.
Emily:
My name is Emily. I have a situation with my boyfriend. He’s a wonderful guy. He’s very loving. He comes from a very abusive background, and so because of that, physical touch is very complicated for him, and so our sex life isn’t that great, our physical touch life isn’t what I need it to be, but I want to respect his needs and respect his boundaries. The issue is he is able to be physically affectionate with our dog. He’s able to shower this dog with all of the love and affection that I wish I could have, and I never thought I’d be in a relationship where I felt jealous of a dog, so I don’t know. I don’t know if you have any advice, or if you’ve ever been jealous of a dog, but that’s my question. What do you do when you’re jealous of a dog? And love your show, by the way.
Glennon Doyle:
Emily, first of all, I’m so sorry for you and your partner. It’s so much. The reverberations of abuse are just so stunning, just how far it goes, how many relationships it touches, like ripples from a stone, how many generations, how many. It’s just amazing, the pain and the destruction, that abuse continues. I’m so sorry. The dog thing, it’s interesting. I’m thinking about how, when I was in therapy in my first marriage, when we were in healing from one of many things, the therapist used to insist that we tried to cuddle and touch each other in a way where there was absolute clear boundaries around nothing going further than snuggling.
Glennon Doyle:
The thing about dogs is that it’s uncomplicated. There’s nothing that’s going to be pushed. There’s no moment, that energy’s going to switch and it’s going to be become sexual. There’s no like power dynamic. It’s so simple. That’s just something that came to my mind. I wonder if there were times where you could snuggle like dogs, where there was a boundary around it, where you both agreed that the rule was it wasn’t going past the snuggle, that that could make both people feel safe. I don’t know. That’s the only idea that I have about the dog love. What are you thinking?
Amanda Doyle:
I understand Emily’s boyfriend. It is much easier for me to show affection, unbridled, just joyful, abandoned affection to my dog than my partner.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, I get that.
Amanda Doyle:
I actually wonder sometimes if it’s a thing, if it’s noticed.
Glennon Doyle:
Oh, if it’s yours. I’m sure it’s noticed.
Amanda Doyle:
Yeah, and I think it’s exactly right, because it’s uncomplicated, and I think it’s at a deeper level. It is about self-love. I think it’s possible, because when you think about it, when you introduce the idea of people, it’s like, “Is the other person worth it? Does the other person deserve it? What is the scorecard today? What will it lead to? Do I have to work out anything before I show this love?” The memory is so long with people, and that the memory is so long in relationships, but a dog, there’s no memory. It’s also so vulnerable. It’s almost like you would have to show that much acceptance and joyful reveling in yourself to be able to share that with another human, but whereas a dog is a different species. It’s like, of course they deserve that. They don’t have any of this human fallibility or complications or whatever.
Glennon Doyle:
Right.
Amanda Doyle:
I don’t have to project on them any of my confusion about myself.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Amanda Doyle:
Whereas with partners, you not only have your issues in your relationship, you also are projecting on them all of the things about yourself, all of the judgments. They did this study where they had a fake news story, and it was the victim in this story was attacked, and they had bones broken, and they changed who the victim was. It was an adult human, a child, an adult dog, and a puppy. Then, they analyzed the levels of sympathy and empathy that the people had based on hearing the story. The levels were the exact same for child, adult dog, puppy. High levels of empathy. They did adult person, low levels of empathy.
Abby Wambach:
Wow.
Amanda Doyle:
The exact same outcome, the exact same situation.
Abby Wambach:
That makes sense.
Amanda Doyle:
And why is that?
Glennon Doyle:
Because we’ve all been hurt by so many humans.
Amanda Doyle:
We’ve been hurt by so many humans, and we see our own selves as not worthy of empathy and sympathy.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Amanda Doyle:
We see our own selves as not worthy of the kind of reckless, joyful love that is unconditional, that we see as a dog.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Amanda Doyle:
And so I actually think it makes total sense. It’s shockingly awful for Emily’s experience. It’s shockingly awful for her partner to not see themselves as either the recipient or the giver of that kind of abandon, and also logically, it makes total sense to me.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. I mean, Emily, I will say that I sensed at the end of your question a little bit of like, “Is this okay or weird for me to be jealous of a dog?” I’m going to tell you, Emily, that I have had moments in my marriage with Abby, where I’m jealous of her dinner. I’m jealous of her food, because she gets excited about food in a way that, first of all, the way Abby gets excited about food is so wonderful.
Amanda Doyle:
The way Abby gets excited about a lot of things-
Glennon Doyle:
That’s true.
Amanda Doyle:
… Is not on the human spectrum.
Glennon Doyle:
Right, but in terms, she’s like a food person. I’ve been jealous of ice cream. I’ve been jealous of steak. I’ve been jealous, so dogs to me are like, “Yeah. That makes perfect sense.”
Amanda Doyle:
Like, get in line.
Glennon Doyle:
But it’s funny, but connected, right? It’s like when you see your person finding, when I see Abby, I’m like, “Oh. That’s how you used to desire me. That’s how you desire that cupcake, right?”
Abby Wambach:
You literally said it to me a few times.
Glennon Doyle:
Oh, I have. I’ve said it out loud. Oh, okay.
Amanda Doyle:
You used to make that noise for me that you’re making for that Cold Stone.
Glennon Doyle:
Exactly. That’s exactly right, right? And so yes, it makes perfect sense to me that you would feel like that is the way you’re loving and being comforted by the dog, is how I wish you were being loved and comforted by me and vice versa. I think it makes perfect sense.
Amanda Doyle:
I mean, not for nothing. My first marriage too, the dog was a big, I realized, at the close of that marriage, that the dog was the wife that my ex-husband needed. No memory, all devotion, no counting of any pains and costs. I mean, he would go away for six months at a time, walk to the door. I would be standing there, harboring the hurt and pain, and counted costs of all the losses in those six months. The dog would be just as fucking happy as if he had gone to the grocery store.
Glennon Doyle:
Oh, damn.
Amanda Doyle:
And that’s what he needed.
Glennon Doyle:
And think about Emily’s partner, where Emily is asking her partner to engage and probably do the work to recover from abuse, and doing all these hard things, and the dog’s like, “I don’t need any of that from you.”
Abby Wambach:
I just think there’s a lot of things that I’ve been thinking. I just think it’s so beautiful and vulnerable for Emily to call and tell us this.
Amanda Doyle:
Yes.
Abby Wambach:
To admit that she’s jealous of her dog. Yes, to that. I also think that it’s got to feel even more difficult in moments, because it’s like, “Don’t you trust me?” Emily’s feeling like, “Why can’t you just trust me? I’m not that.” There’s just so many layers to this that we don’t know about, and so to me it’s just therapy. It’s like, I hope that he could hear this, to hear how much you love him, and to hear how important this is to you and to maybe want to do a little bit of work, and I also think that she, Emily, you have to explore that, because even though we might have ideas and desires, and yes, we want to honor those as much as possible, when you are in a partnership, those desires have limits in some ways, because somebody else is a part of this equation. Though that is beautiful in many ways, it’s also really difficult. And so, I don’t know, I just think communicating this with your partner is the number one step, like not in a judgment way.
Glennon Doyle:
So not like, “You used to look at me like you look at that brownie”? Not like that?
Abby Wambach:
That would be better to do it not in that way.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah.
Amanda Doyle:
It’s possible.
Abby Wambach:
I would be more open to a conversation if it didn’t have that attached to the front part of the sentence.
Glennon Doyle:
Totally. Got it.
Abby Wambach:
But I think that there’s so much opportunity here. It could be interesting to grow your relationship and build your relationship in different ways, that might not have much to do with physical touch right now, but that it could promote that down the road and in the future. I don’t know. It makes me excited. Of course, here I am being excited.
Amanda Doyle:
And also, I would just say, absolutely, Emily, I was, in my first marriage, very jealous of the dog. He would come back in town, he would pick up the dog before he’d come see me. Actually, that was the order of priority, so I completely understand that. And to the extent you feel any embarrassment about that, I have absolutely been there.
Amanda Doyle:
Also, two things is that the dog might seem like it’s a barrier right now to your affection, but it also might be the road if he can only do that with the dog right now, it is at least a stepping stone towards the ability to show affection, the ability to allow himself to do that. I’m not saying you should stick around for this to work out. Maybe you shouldn’t, honestly. If you’re not getting your needs met, Emily, I bless you to go get your needs met somewhere else, because you might never get them met here. I wasn’t in my first marriage, and that was a really good decision to not be there anymore, and maybe this is a step on the road.
Abby Wambach:
That’s good.
Amanda Doyle:
And also, it isn’t about whether that person deems you worthy of the kind of affection they can give the dog. It’s whether that person deems themself worthy to give and receive that kind of love with another human.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes. That’s it.
Abby Wambach:
That’s good.
Glennon Doyle:
That’s right. Oh my goodness. I think that we should, every once in a while, do these, and I just love hearing about these people,
Amanda Doyle:
I know.
Glennon Doyle:
These beautiful-
Amanda Doyle:
I know. People are out there being so brave every day.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. River and Emily, thank you so much.
Amanda Doyle:
A River Runs Through It.
Glennon Doyle:
Thank you so, so much.
Abby Wambach:
It’s probably not the first time they heard that.
Glennon Doyle:
You knew that was coming.
Amanda Doyle:
I restrained myself for like 20 minutes.
Glennon Doyle:
Pod Squad, we do not have any answers, but we know a couple of things, and one is that there is nothing wrong with you, not a damn thing, and that life is really hard, and it’s not hard because you’re doing it wrong. It’s just hard because it was designed that way. The cool thing about life being hard is that it forces us to need each other. It’s probably one of the reasons why you’re listening to this podcast, so thank you for that. Thank you for being the community that we rely on to get through this thing, this hard life. We love you. We will continue to do hard things together, and we will see you back here next week. Bye.
Glennon Doyle:
If this podcast means something to you, it would mean so much to us if you’d be willing to take 30 seconds to do these three things. First, can you please follow or subscribe to We Can Do Hard Things? Following the pod helps you because you’ll never miss an episode, and it helps us because you’ll never miss an episode. To do this, just go to the We Can Do Hard Things show page on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Odyssey, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Then, just tap the plus sign in the upper, right-hand corner or click on follow. This is the most important thing for the pod. While you’re there, if you’d be willing to give us a five star rating and review, and share an episode you loved with a friend, we would be so grateful. We appreciate you very much. We Can Do Hard Things is produced in partnership with Cadence13 Studios.